chadwest.net

As you may remember the engine on my SS died a while back. All I know is that there was a horrible noise which made me kill the engine as quickly as I able to react. When I ensured there was enough oil in the crank case I tried to kick it over to see what would happen. This is when I found out the kick starter went right to the ground with out much effort, because whatever it engages with inside wasn’t anymore.

Well with a little research on the scooter sites, I found the only way to fix this is to crack open the engine cases, which if done by the scooter shop when all said and done with parts and labor will probably run me around $700. Great then this is an excellent opportunity to educate myself on Piaggio’s fine engineering and in the process save some dough by doing the work myself.

That weekend I dropped the engine from the body. The Hyanes manual claimed this should take 1 hour, but it in fact took 5 1/2 for me. Not so bad considering make my living as a Software Engineer. But as you can see, this was a month and a half ago.

Well today I finally bit the bullet and dove into it. After an hour I was at the point in which I needed to remove the flywheel. Cool! Well not so cool. I can’t get the god damn thing to stay put and I am worried of damaging the piston in the mean time. After 2 hours cursing and the stupid thing, I decided to make a trip to Sears to pick up an impact wrench. These are suppose to help getting stubborn bolts loose. Guess what?! No dice. I’m pretty sure that I’m not using the tool correctly, but of course it doesn’t come with directions. It’s so frustrating.

I’m not sure my nerves can deal with this. I think I’m going to call the scooter shop Tuesday to see when they can begin working on the engine.